Book Review: Kevin J Barrett (ed.), We are Not Charlie Hebdo! Free Thinkers Question the French 9/11
| Date | 01 February 2017 |
| Author | Luis Cordeiro Rodrigues |
| DOI | 10.1177/1478929916674587 |
| Published date | 01 February 2017 |
| Subject Matter | Book ReviewsGeneral Politics |
120 Political Studies Review 15 (1)
‘resilience’ focuses on the agency and choices
of ordinary everyday people in its conception
of the policy process. Individual agency and
the complex behavioural trends it gives rise to
are understood as mechanisms which public
policy must make use of if it is to succeed.
Chandler’s argument is strongest and most
provocative in the development of his episte-
mology. Following an impressively wide vari-
ety of theorists (from Slavoj Žižek to Walter
Lippmann), Chandler sets up a contrast
between the static, predictable ‘artifice’
required within traditional, top-down
approaches to governance and the messy and
unpredictable ‘reality’ of everyday life.
Understandably, perhaps, both policymakers
and theorists are biased in favour of the artifi-
cial ontology, since any alternative would
require agnosticism and even paralysis. Yet,
more than ever before, we are confronting the
limits of this view. Once we recognise the
agency (qua unpredictability) of social actors,
then error, irrationality and unintended conse-
quences can no longer be seen as ‘obstacles’ to
good governance or as political phenomena
located outside of the ‘economic’. Instead,
these phenomena become the lens through
which we can understand what it means to
‘govern’ our collective choices.
Despite this valuable epistemic break with
the top-down approach implicit in Anheier’s
book, Chandler nevertheless seems reluctant to
follow his argument to its conclusion. In par-
ticular, he declines to follow Friedrich Hayek,
who advocated a similar epistemology in order
to justify a constitutional market order midway
through the twentieth century. Accordingly,
Chandler resorts to the very assumptions he
deplores by arguing, ultimately, for govern-
ment as the proper basis for postmodern gov-
ernance. Yet government can only provide
governance if, to reverse Anheier’s terminol-
ogy (pp. 9–10), governors know which secon-
dorder (‘meta’) political choices promote the
right first-order conditions to enable social
actors to solve problems. It is precisely this
assumption which Anheier’s book leaves open
and which Chandler pushes us to problematise.
Taken to its conclusion then, the recognition of
complexity surely encourages the promulga-
tion of different, competing conceptions of
governance rather than one overarching gov-
ernment. As both books demonstrate, however,
governance theorists are likely to find this a
bitter pill to swallow.
Paul Gunn
(Goldsmiths, University of London)
© The Author(s) 2016
Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav
DOI: 10.1177/1478929916676947
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We are Not Charlie Hebdo! Free Thinkers
Question the French 9/11 by Kevin J Barrett
(ed.). Lone Rock, WI: Sifting and Winnowing
Books; Khadir Press, 2015. 244pp., £13.39 (p/b),
ISBN 9780996143004
We Are Not Charlie Hebdo: Free Thinkers
Question the French 9/11 is a thoughtful and
challenging book edited by Kevin Barrett. This
book addresses the ways in which the Charlie
Hebdo incident has been instrumentalised,
especially via the ‘Je Suis Charlie’ movement,
to propagate Islamophobic ideas in the West
and, consequently, further discriminate against
Muslims. Part I of the book is split into eight
chapters that address quite different topics
from each other, and it is not always clear how
they are linked.
Nevertheless, by reading the chapters in
depth, it is possible to identify at least two fea-
tures they have in common. First, all the chap-
ters provide historical evidence of Islamophobia
in the West. For example, chapter 1 traces dis-
courses of Islamophobia in the West and chap-
ter 3 focuses on Islamophobia in the French
context. Second, the chapters in this section
agree with the idea that there are certain cir-
cumstances that led to, and provoked, the ter-
rorist attacks in the West. Put differently, there
is a pattern that preceded the attacks and it is a
pattern linked to Islamophobia in the West.
The second part of this book comprises 16
chapters and an afterword. Despite the fact that
this part of the book is less homogeneous than
the previous one, all the chapters offer a critical
analysis as to why one should not endorse the
‘Je Suis Charlie movement’.
We Are Not Charlie Hebdo: Free Thinkers
Question the French 9/11 is an important book.
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